


UnSHIELDED

by AnonEhouse



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Gen, Good Dad Howard Stark, Not friendly to Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers Dies, Team Tony, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 12:39:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17162156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/AnonEhouse
Summary: What if Steve wasn't holding the vibranium shield when Peggy shot at him?(I'm using Choose Not to Warn, but to be fair, I'm telling you in case you missed the tag, Steve dies. It's quick, and painless, and necessary as the turning point for this what if.)





	UnSHIELDED

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

 

Howard Stark had heard about Private Lorraine kissing Rogers. The girl had gone around bragging about how forward she'd been. He wasn't blaming her too much, Rogers was a work of art. But turn it around and if a man had grabbed her and kissed her without permission there would have been screams and slaps. 

Eh, not his business to try to uphold social mores. There was a war going on, and women were being told to become farmers and welders, machinists and soldiers. You couldn't expect them to stay meek when you had them doing a man's job. Which was fine by Howard, he liked his women able to stand toe to toe with him and tell him what they wanted.

He had his own work to do, and right now, that meant showing Rogers the prototype shields he'd begun work on. "This one's fun. She's being fitted with electrical relays. - That will allow you to.." 

Rogers reached for the vibranium shield. 

"Hey, that's just metal, it's strong, but it's not _smart_." Howard offered Rogers the electrical shield instead. "When this is finished, you'll be able to use it not only as a shield, but also as a boost to communications devices, and a disrupter for any other signal transmissions."

Rogers dutifully picked it up and held it in front of himself. "It's light."

"Yeah, it's just an aluminum shell at the moment, need to get the shape right before..."

Peggy Carter walked in. 

Rogers smiled tentatively at her over the edge of the shield.

She pulled out her service pistol and fired three shots, rapid-fire, directly at the shield. She was smiling.

Rogers screamed and fell.

Carter stood there, with the gun held loosely in her fingers. She looked shocked. "That... wasn't supposed to happen."

Howard dropped to his knees and threw aside the destroyed shield, trying desperately to stop Rogers' bleeding. Rogers looked up at him, blood bubbled up from his mouth, and then his whole body went slack. "No, no, no, God, no! MEDIC!" Howard shouted, but he knew it was useless. The blood, that precious, unique blood, wasn't flowing, wasn't being driven by Rogers' great heart.

"You SAID that you made him a shield that would stop bullets!" Carter screamed. "YOU SAID! IT'S YOUR FAULT, HOWARD!"

"Get her out of here," Howard said, as the medics and corpsmen rushed in, pushing him aside. He sat up and looked at the blood on his hands.

 

After the mad rush to the infirmary, after all the shouting was done, Howard was left staring at Rogers' body, draped under a sheet. "What a waste," he whispered. "Erskine, and you, and... all the lives that could have been saved if only..." His lips thinned with determination. No one was around at the moment, they'd allowed him the privacy to mourn the loss of his dreams. He couldn't allow it. Schmidt still had enough of Erskine's records that they might create a version of the serum. America needed it. Rogers had been willing to risk dying to serve his country. He wouldn't mind serving it after his death. Howard selected a large bore syringe and a rack of test tubes. "I'm sorry, Steve," he said. "You were a good man. You deserved a chance."

 

"So, when do I testify?" Howard asked Colonel Phillips the next time he saw him.

"Testify?" Phillips said, without looking up from the weapon Howard was offering him for testing.

"I need to schedule it," Howard said. "I could make a deposition, maybe, to get it started. I don't want to lose too much time."

"About what?" Phillips said, finally raising his gaze. 

"About what?" Howard asked, surprised. "Carter shot Rogers. I witnessed it."

"You witnessed nothing," Phillips said. He was scowling. "One of our own killed Captain America out of jealousy over a single kiss? Never happened."

"Where's Carter? What's going to happen to her? She didn't mean to kill him, you know. It was... well, not quite an accident, but she didn't think she'd hurt him."

"Yeah, she tried to put the blame on you," Phillips said. He paused before continuing, "Higher echelons decided to cut their losses before she blackened your name, too. I'm told she's been sent on an underground mission. I don't know where, or what." He paused. "I don't really expect she'll be back."

"Suicide mission?"

"I wasn't given the details. Rogers' group's been broken up, they shouldn't have been sent out again, anyway. Most of them have been repatriated for their own countries to deal with, and the US soldiers have been given medical leave, with the possibility of honorable discharge if the doctors rule them physically or mentally unable to continue serving."

"They wanted to go back and fight," Howard said.

"There are RULES for a reason, Mr. Stark. When we had a larger than life hero who wanted to form a commando group, yeah, sure, then we could let them slip through the cracks, but throwing traumatized men back behind the lines on their own? That's nuts."

Howard sighed. "It seems a shame, that's all."

"Yeah, well, Erskine's project was a gamble. It didn't pay off, that's the end of it."

 

The Strategic Scientific Reserve became a low priority after the war, which didn't surprise Howard. They had some successes, but nothing flashy enough to inspire the government to open up their coffers. He also couldn't say he was surprised when he was surreptitiously approached to fund a new offshoot of the SSR. He supposed they fiddled with words for a few hours before they came up with something that could be acronymed as 'SHIELD'. 

"No," Howard said curtly when Peggy Carter walked into his home without an invitation and unannounced. Howard was shocked at first, but then he became, to put it mildly, furious, when she explained what she wanted. "You really think you're being subtle, working on my sense of guilt with that shield?"

"If you'd given Rogers the vibranium..."

"Get the hell out of my house," Howard said. 

Carter pulled herself up tall. "You owe it to Steve's memory. SHIELD can protect America, the way he would, without having to deal with politics."

"With laws, you mean. Get out before I call the cops. I'm a scientist, not a spy."

"You wouldn't be a spy, Howard," Carter said. "You'd lead the scientific division. Operation Paperclip will give us first choice of all the Axis scientists. They'd be under your direct command. We just need funding. You could claim all the non-military results for your company."

Howard's jaw dropped. "You've got Zola. My God, you want me to set up a think tank staffed by Hydra. You want me to PAY the salaries for Hydra. How much of this SHIELD is actually HYDRA?"

Carter scowled. "We vetted them very carefully, Howard. They weren't idealogically aligned with Hydra. The German economy was bad, so they signed up."

Howard stared at Carter for a long moment. "Don't you ever come near me again."

"I thought you'd want to make up for your mistake."

"Not by making an even bigger one."

"You'll change your mind, Howard," Carter said. "You know someone's always got to do the dirty jobs. Isn't it a kindness not to burden everyone else's conscience with them?"

"No. It's really not. Show yourself out, and I'll forget you were here. That's the last kindness I'll do you, or your SHIELD." 

After Carter left, Howard found Jarvis, slumped over the table in the pantry, an ether-soaked rag lying on top of the silver teapot he'd been polishing. He stirred at Howard's touch, and then was violently ill, confused and frightened, trying to apologize in between bouts of retching.

Howard regretted not calling the police on Carter, but he was glad he'd turned her down. The end justifies the means was a war morality, bad enough then, but to drug an innocent man in peacetime, just out of convenience? Where does it end? 

 

It was slow, working on the serum formula by himself, but Howard had learned his lesson. No one was to be trusted. He'd gone into partnership with a clever businessman, hoping to spend more time on research instead of tedious business minutiae. Unfortunately one of his random unannounced checkups uncovered evidence that Obadiah Stane wasn't just stealing from the company, but selling to America's enemies. 

So Howard turned him in, leading the police to Stane at his girlfriend's Southhampton palatial estate, where he was attending a party.

"I apologize for spoiling the festivities," Howard told Stane's girlfriend as the police dragged a handcuffed and cursing Stane away while the expensively dressed guests clutched their wine glasses and stared.

"Oh, think nothing of it," she said, airily. "I never really liked Obie. He had beady eyes. You can't really trust a man who has beady eyes, now, can you?" She smiled at Howard.

"You're very wise. I must remember that," Howard said. "Let me introduce myself." He bowed slightly and held out his hand. "Howard Stark, at your service."

"Howard. What a nice name." She took Howard's hand. "I'm Maria Carbonell. Why have you never come to one of my parties before?" She continued holding Howard's hand.

"Eh, I wasn't invited. Nouveau riche." He gestured to his suit, which was probably more expensive than any of the party goers' garments. "I clean up well, though."

"So you do." Maria smiled at him. "You shall be on all my invitations in future, Mr. Stark. Shall we dance?"

"Yes, I do believe we shall." Howard led Maria back into the house, to the ballroom.

 

 

Having once witnessed the wrath of a jealous woman, Howard had no plans to marry, but...Maria just... she wasn't just beautiful, or intelligent, or sweet natured. She was... Maria. He gave up lying to himself when he realized he turned down a date with one of Hollywood's latest starlets because when he looked at his yacht, he only wanted to see Maria there with him.

 

As society weddings went, it was rather subdued. Maria's family objected to Howard on the grounds of his age, his background, his past history, his family, and his style, right down to the cut of his trousers and his mustache. 

"I could shave," Howard offered, facetiously when Maria came to him, eye-rolling as she listed their complaints. "But I can't do much about the rest!" he said.

"I like your mustache. It tickles," she said. "It stays. Your girlfriends, though..." Her eyes narrowed. "That is another story."

"I will burn my little black book before your eyes," Howard promised. He smiled. "I don't want anyone but you."

 

 

It took decades to recreate what he thought was a close variant of the superserum, but no matter what he did, when he exposed the serum treated mice to vita-rays, the results were unpredictable. Even using nearly genetically identical strains of white mice and keeping all the variables the same, it just... one would turn monstrous, one would bulk up its muscles, one would become stronger and faster with no obvious external change, and some fluctuated between seemingly normal and then monstrous when excited. And of course, a lot of them simply died.

Giving them just the serum seemed to improve their general health, but it wasn't anything like the full treatment, and it wasn't really dramatic enough to prove anything. If he gave the serum to a sickly mouse, it generally survived, but maybe it would have lived anyway. It was statistically leaning towards probably helping. 

 

He wasn't going to test it on a human. 

No, he really wasn't.

 

But... Maria wanted a baby. And after the Manhattan Project... it just... it seemed the one thing Howard couldn't give her.

She was determined. She wanted them to keep trying, even though it just... they never... they were so small...

 

The doctors advised Maria not to try again when the last boy was born, small and blue and quiet. But Howard knew from the look in her eyes that she wouldn't give up. 

It was difficult to distract the nurses in the neonatal care unit, but not impossible. Howard slipped a dose of the serum into an IV line. It was a very small dose. It probably wouldn't do anything. But he had to try. 

He worked his hand in past all the wires and tubes to touch the tissue thin skin of his son. Midnight blue eyes snapped open, huge and bright. A tiny hand reached out and wrapped around his finger, holding on with surprising strength.

The baby kicked and let out a protesting wail, the first sound any of Maria's babies had made.

Howard grinned. "Hello, Tony," he said. "You're going to be strong, just like your old man. Starks are made of iron."

**Author's Note:**

> Carbonell is an English origin name- possibly from 'carbon' referring to people with black hair. It's not Italian. 
> 
> According to comics wiki Maria was a New York born Socialite and had dated Obadiah Stane-- this is from the modern age comics run, during a canon retconning spree which I attribute to new writers wanting to make a mark for themselves by subverting the original writer's visions and characterizations and history. 
> 
> In the retcon, even though Tony has Howard's genius and EVERYONE thinks he looks like Howard, Tony is actually an adopted kid whose father was HYDRA and his mother an agent who gave him up... I haven't read those comics, but come ON, wasn't Superior Evil Iron Man enough? Wasn't Hydra Steve enough? Why does Marvel hate their heroes?
> 
> http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Maria_Carbonell_(Earth-616)
> 
> I just remembered the Valkyrie- the plane with all the death bombs that Steve put down in the ice. Obviously the bombs were never used, or else this story would end a lot differently! I think that although we didn't see it, the slave labor the Red Skull used were very brave, and they sabotaged the bombs, so when the plane was sent out, the first bomb blew it up in mid air.
> 
> Sometimes our heroes are unseen.


End file.
